PETER OBORNE: Welcome death of the 'Notting Hill set' of David Cameron's Oxbridge-educated chums and the return of grown-up politics

The phrase ‘Notting Hill set’ entered the political lexicon almost 13 years ago.

It was coined by me to describe the coterie of rich, privileged, Oxbridge-educated careerists who were chums of David Cameron when he launched his ultimately successful bid to become Tory leader.

At the time, I was political correspondent of The Spectator magazine.

The phrase ‘Notting Hill set’ describes the coterie of rich, privileged, Oxbridge-educated careerists who were chums of David Cameron when he launched his ultimately successful bid to become Tory leader

My intention was to categorise this group who mainly lived in or around Notting Hill, the area of West London which had become gentrified in the years following the 1958 race riots and which was much favoured by professionals such as investment bankers.

It also achieved fame as the location of the eponymous romantic comedy starring Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant (who played a charming-but-bumbling bookshop owner).

Indeed, many of Cameron’s inner circle could have had walk-on parts in that film, which centred on a group of self-obsessed and smug luvvies. Their charm and polish was matched only by a moral vacuity and lack of principle.

Share this article

Share

14 shares

Like Tony Blair before them, they were youngish, media-savvy and metropolitan.

As voters were later to discover when they rose to positions of power, this gilded elite were incapable of understanding what life was like for hard-working families who did not live in the more comfortable parts of central London and the Home Counties.

Ultimately, their insincerity, arrogance and reliance on political gimmicks was exposed when Cameron lost last summer’s EU referendum vote and he humiliatingly had to resign as prime minister.

If June 23, 2016, marked the moment when a dagger was plunged into the heart of the Notting Hill set and everything it stood for, this week saw its death as Theresa May unveiled her unashamedly moral and honest vision for Britain.

As the writer who first gave them that name, I feel duty-bound now to comment on their demise.

This week saw the set's death as Theresa May unveiled her unashamedly moral and honest vision for Britain

And it was deliciously symbolic that as the vicar’s daughter set out her core beliefs and hopes for Britain, Cameron was in so-called Sin City, Las Vegas, pocketing a fat cheque for making a speech to billionaire bankers.

Crucially, Mrs May’s manifesto takes Britain in a new direction. It places public duty above private gratification. It brings an end to the cronyism that was one of the defining features of the Cameron era — which ended in a sleazy chumocracy with the former PM’s aides receiving bumper pay packets and being garlanded with gongs and peerages.

Mrs May also wants a country where talent and hard work — not privilege and connection — should be the key to success.

Above all, her manifesto signals a new seriousness about politics. For she is prepared to make difficult and unpopular decisions of the kind which Cameron and his Notting Hill set shirked.

The most important of these concerns social care policy.

Her view that the elderly should not expect current and future taxpayers to pay for their care may have been criticised — because this policy risks leaving pensioners ‘helpless’ in the face of rising costs.

But such a bold move is absolutely necessary if this country is to remain solvent in the decades to come, as its elderly population grows ever larger.

The truth is that Mrs May has shown courage.

The PM, too, has demonstrated admirable honesty in rejecting Cameron’s reckless tax promises, in jettisoning an unrealistic timetable to cut the national debt and in warning there is no magic tree to fund the NHS and schools. In sum, Mrs May’s unremittingly principled philosophy and the death of the Notting Hill set marks a return to real politics.

For anyone who values the clash of ideas and principle, then the General Election campaign of 2017 is shaping up to be an exemplary battle.

As well as the clear-cut position of Mrs May, Labour, under Jeremy Corbyn, deserves great credit for the way it has made a break with the past. Just as Mrs May has turned her back on the putrid legacy of Cameron, so Corbyn has finally expunged the moral horror that were the Blair years. With May and Corbyn, voters have a real choice between two very different philosophies — whereas in the age of Blair and Cameron, the two main parties’ manifestos were very similar.

Just as Mrs May has turned her back on the putrid legacy of Cameron, so Corbyn has finally expunged the moral horror that were the Blair years

Whether you agree with him or not, it is indisputable that Corbyn has produced a serious, socialist manifesto. His plans involve nationalisation of the railways, tax rises and whacking the rich.

Such policies are true to the soul of the Labour Party and to its early-20th century founders who fought to improve the conditions of the poor.

Like Mrs May, Mr Corbyn has restored honest politics to Britain. For that, I salute him — even if I accept he has displayed incompetence and that some of his colleagues are deeply flawed.

Significantly, I believe that this return to core values is also the result of last year’s Brexit vote.

One of the biggest defects with the EU has been its visceral hostility to democracy.

As a result, it is impossible for national politicians to address their voters’ concerns because key decisions are not taken at a national level, but in Brussels or the headquarters of the European Central Bank in Frankfurt.

This means that domestic politicians become reduced to impotence and feel they can cynically promise whatever they like without any chance of being expected to deliver.

In Italy and Greece, for instance, politicians are powerless to tackle the economic catastrophe and mass unemployment that has brought ruin and despair to both countries.

In Britain, politicians have been powerless to stop mass immigration from Eastern Europe because of EU rules concerning the free movement of people.

With these vital decisions being made by bureaucrats and bankers in foreign capitals, politicians have come to be held in utter contempt. No wonder there is so much apathy at election time.

Suddenly, with Theresa May, Jeremy Corbyn, Brexit and the death of the Notting Hill set, politics has become more relevant again. Politicians are accountable to the people who vote for them, not the bureaucrats. And this is certainly something to celebrate.

Shame on the Establishment Mr Fixit

This week, the Attorney General, Jeremy Wright, renewed his High Court bid to block a private prosecution of Tony Blair over the Iraq war.

How grotesque!

At a time when the availability of legal aid has been cut, leaving thousands of people struggling to pay court costs as they fight for justice, it is reprehensible for taxpayers’ money to be used to protect multi-millionaire Blair from facing the consequences of what I believe was an illegal war.

This week, the Attorney General, Jeremy Wright, renewed his High Court bid to block a private prosecution of Tony Blair over the Iraq war

I am afraid the Attorney General’s move confirms a depressing rule of modern politics. It is that the one thing that unites politicians is the need to protect each other.

Specifically, however, I believe that something can be done to stop Mr Wright’s mistaken course of action.

The Conservative is standing for re-election as the MP for Kenilworth and Southam.

The good folk in this Warwickshire constituency who think Tony Blair should not have immunity from any criminal charges relating to the Iraq war should consider deeply whether this Mr Fixit for the Establishment deserves their vote on June 8.

Saturday vote saboteur

Support for my campaign to move elections from Thursdays to Saturdays comes from an unlikely source. Joe Haines — legendary press officer to Labour prime minister Harold Wilson — tells me that he convinced his boss to push for the switch in the Seventies.

Unfortunately, the then PM was put off by Labour grandee Ian Mikardo, who argued, bizarrely, that ‘our people go away weekends’.

As Haines comments sarcastically: ‘Just imagine all those country cottages belonging to “our people’’!’